Behavioral Research Blog

Throwing Shade: The Science of Resting Bitch Face

Posted by Jason Rogers, Ph.D. & Abbe Macbeth, Ph.D. on Oct 14, 2015
We all know the face. No, not just the face, but that face. That look that she swears is not a look.
She says shes not angry; she reassures you shes having fun. But her face has been throwing
shade all night without saying anything, that face is indicating that she is not happy; more than
not happy, shes about to make your night miserable too. There are plenty of memes, jokes, and
videos, much like this one, which make light of that face, which in 2015 has become better
known as Resting B---- Face (RBF).
Some argue that the term itself is misogynistic1. Others argue that its a misinterpretation of
something innocuous, like social anxiety. Although both make strong arguments, one could
spend longer than this blog to discuss all possible root causes. But the root causes may not even
matter, as that face continues to stare at us, haunt us, and make us second guess our every
decision when its pointed in our direction. RBF. We recognize it in celebrities, on the streets,
and even in our own family. No currently celebrity has received as much ridicule for RBF as poor
Kristen Stewart, who (perhaps undeservingly) has become the poster child for such an afiction.
But way beyond the cultural norms and cruel jokes, we have to ask: is there something more to
RBF? What is the reason that we all react to that face so negatively?
The answer may lie in our brains, which have evolved the fusiform face gyrus, an area that
specializes in recognizing faces2, as well specic regions of the right parietal cortex that are
specically activated when analyzing facial expressions3. Pioneering work from legends in the
eld of psychology, particularly Paul Ekman4 and some of his colleagues, have contributed a vast
understanding of faces and how our brain recognizes them. With current technology, scientists
can go one step further in their research and automate facial expression classication using the
most sophisticated technology on the market today. This technology, called FaceReader5, is

capable of reading over ve hundred points on the face to determine the emotional expressions
of the six basic emotions: happy, angry, sad, scared, surprised, and disgusted. These emotions
are displayed by all people, across all races, genders, and ages. Since these basic emotions were
identied over 50 years ago, researchers have added additional universally-displayed emotions
to the list. One of these later additions remains something of an enigma; not treated as a
universal expression until the 1990s, the emotion of contempt elicits strong debate.
While on the same continuum as anger, the philosopher Robert C. Solomon6 and others, such as
researcher John Gottman, treat contempt differently its more a blend of anger and sadness
directed at those deemed below you. Contempt is maladaptive in that it is particularly toxic
when it develops between people in a relationship7. While contempt can be displayed for a
variety of reasons, its easily recognized due to its curious facial phenotype: lips and brow not
quite angry or sad, the lip tightened and raised more strongly on one side than the other. But in
regards to this article: why is contempt included in a discussion on RBF?
Recently, consultants at Noldus Information Technology (Leesburg, VA) ran a series of videos
and images through FaceReader to determine whether RBF has a facial phenotype. Images were
taken from a Google search, focusing on celebrities (such as Kristen Stewart), as well as others
like Kanye West and Queen Elizabeth, and the video mentioned above. All faces in the images
were veried across social media as displaying true RBF. Both static images and running videos
were processed through FaceReader 6.1, one of the most sophisticated tools for automatically
measuring facial emotional expression. What emerged rather quickly was that across faces the
amount of anger, sadness, and fear displayed were highly variablebut to the surprise of the
research team, one emotion continued to rear its ugly head: the dreaded contempt. As shown in
Figure 1, contempt measures very low on 10 normal faces, only accounting for approximately
3% of the overall emotional expression. On 10 faces displaying RBF, however, the percentage of
contempt is signicantly higher, almost doubling to 5.76% of the total emotion.

Fig1.
This is a fundamental and key point. FaceReader is not detecting enough contempt to reect
true contempt, because these faces are not actually displaying contempt. It just looks like
contempt to the viewer. Thus, it is the perception of that unconscious, subtle contempt
expression that denes RBF. Although that face may not be intentional, the viewers brain is
wired to analyze, and recognize, when a face is displaying even minute traces of contempt.
Because contempt is based upon elements of comparison and judgment, viewing this in
someones face creates a feeling of uneasiness, or uncomfortableness, for the person viewing

that face. Look at Figure 2, which shows an example from another (perhaps deserving) RBF
celebrity: Kanye West. While we wouldnt say Kanye is showing anger, or disgust, or any other
negative emotion we know that he isnt simply neutral either. Indeed, FaceReader registers
those minute amounts of contempt that are simply not present in non-RBF neutral faces.

Fig 2 (Picture Kanye West By David Shankbone (David Shankbone) [CC BY 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
Need further convincing? Take a look at Figure 3, showing some additional faces; note the spikes
in contempt that FaceReader detects in these faces!

Fig 3. Analyzed video from YouTube channel Broken People

Think you or a loved one may have RBF? Test yourself!
Not to promote something we wont do ourselves, our author Abbe Macbeth allowed herself to
be used as an example of how contempt does not register on a neutral face without RBF; shes
never been described as having that look when just neutral! In Fig 4 you can see her example
the difference between this neutral and Fig 2 and 3 is quite clear: the spikes in contempt that are
observed in RBF are no longer present.

After analyzing your photo you just continue to defend: See, Im just thinking! I dont have
RBF!!!.!

Fig 4.

REFERENCES
1. Deutsch, F.M., LeBaron, D., & Fryer, M.M. (1987). Whats in a smile? Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 11, 341-352.
2. Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., Chun, M.M. (1997). The fusiform face area: A module in
human extrastriate cortex specialized for facial perception. Journal of Neuroscience, 17,
4302-4311.
3. Adolphs, R., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., Damasio, A.R. (1996). Cortical systems for the
recognition of emotion in facial expressions. Journal of Neurosicence, 16, 7678-7687
4. Ekman, P. 1977 Facial Expression. In Nonverbal Behavior and Communication, eds
Siegman, A. and Feldstein, S. New Jersey.

5. Lewinski, P., Fransen, M.L., and Tan, E.S.H. (2014). Predicting advertising effectiveness by
facial expressions in response to amusing persuasive stimuli. Journal of Neuroscience,
Psychology, and Economics, 7, 1-14.
6. Solomon, R.C. (1993). The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life. Hackett Publishing
7. Gottman, J., Levenson, R., & Woodin, E. (2001). Facial expressions during marital conict.
Journal of Family Communication, 1, 37-57.
8. Abbe Macbeth, Ph. D. and Jason Rogers, Ph. D.
Topics: social behavior research, emotion recognition, FaceReader, facial expression analysis,
emotions, measuring behavior, RBF, Resting Bitch Face